Propaganda, Anti-Detroit Style

Felix Salmon just wrote an excellent post on the oft-repeated myth that “the average GM worker costs more than $70 an hour, once you include health and pension costs.” As Felix explains, you only get to that number if you include all of the costs G.M. is paying for retired workers. It has nothing to do with what an actual G.M. assembly-line worker makes.

It’s true, of course, that G.M. does have to pay retiree costs, and mentioning those costs in any discussion of the financial burdens G.M. is under makes sense. But that’s not what people are doing, rhetorically, when they use the seventy-dollars-an-hour number. What they’re doing is trying to make it sound as if G.M.’s current assembly-line workers are earning outrageous compensation for their labor, in order to demonize the U.A.W. U.A.W. workers are well-paid by industrial-worker standards. But they are not getting rich building Buicks, and making it sound as if they are is pure propaganda.

James Surowiecki is the author of “The Wisdom of Crowds” and writes about economics, business, and finance for the magazine.